DaemosDaen

I had an idea that would probably render faster (if that is even an issue) but I'm not sure how much of the animation you used or have control of but....

Dunno about that, the bot flying, then 'landing' (playing the drone's portion of the animation used for entering a roboport) then minning (the repair animation of the construction robot) then taking off (exiting the roboport animation) back to flying.

having said all that, nor sure if that's less frames as I'm not sure how many frames from the player character you are using for these drones.

Man we need the return of pre-blue science construction robots.

If you want early game construction bots: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Construction_Drones

mobsterer

for performance: would a version with default drones and without sounds possibly improve it?

I love the mod, but am afraid of not being able to use it in big setups.

The graphics and sound don't really affect performance.

You can use up to like 10,000 mining drones before it would start to affect the UPS a lot.

JMJ05

How many miners does a supply depot allow you to create?

100, up to 144 or so (The game engine does some weird logic to determine the number)

Flux7777

Hi Klonan, thanks for this, it has great uses for mixed ore patches. Does it work with custom ores from other mods?

Yes, it should work with mod ores. If you find a mod that doesn't work, just let me know and I can fix it

krusnikon

But can they mine Uranium?

They can, as long as you provide the acid

Loraash

Are they driven from Lua to still have this UPS or some kind of clever biter AI abuse to make them hate ore?

Most of the hard stuff is handled through the engine, the script just makes the drones and tells them to 'attack' the ore.

DaemosDaen

Notice a lack of slots for modules/ Guess speed modules are useless if you can have a stupid number of drones.

Any spicific reason you didn't just use a re-colored construction robot doing the repair animation for mining?

They walk along the ground and do pathfinding, so the flying drone graphics would look out of place

Azthais

It's so tempting to use as a replacement, it makes me wonder what if any of a UPS difference would be using a field of drills vs. their equivalent in mining drones on a large scale. I know you mention elsewhere this is probably not a good replacement for larger factories but seeing that you'd need to move to logistic drones at a certain point due to drills outputting more than a single blue belt in a row, it makes me wonder if there's a point where mining drones would produce more ore for less processing power compared to drills and a logistics network.

Hmm... if you get enough speed and productivity research, they could be more efficient

solazs

It's awful. I love it.

How does it scale? Look like it's not exactly UPS friendly.

Should be fine until you start getting really late game multiple rockets a minute bases.

Troyseph91

Do the blue arrows on the building mean anything?

One indicated which way the drones will come out (and where the mining area is). The other is the fluid input, for things like mining uranium.

GeePee29

Do they produce pollution?

Yep

Azthais

Have you done the math on how well the drones work vs. drills? Obviously there's going to be some sort of linear graph that states how far a drone travels before a drill would outperform it, but from raw numbers about how many drones would you say would equal a drill?

It depends on the technology level. The drones have some researches that really start to boost their max output.

At the start, I'd say that it about 2-3 drones is comparable to 1 mining drill.

Cassiopee38

Nice idea ! I would have liked trucks/excavatrices but slave are cool too =D

I thought about little baby excavators with tiny buckets, but I am not well versed in the wizardry of 3d animation or rendering, so I just reused the base game character dude.

a0nemanarmy

Klonan, any idea what this would do to your ups lategame?

Its as efficient as it can be, I've had over 10,000 mining before and UPS has been fine.

With all the upgrades they mine faster than the mining drills, so that means less are needed to do the job, but with the overhead of the script update, they are probably worse than mining drills for megabase scales

Ibrahaim

Laggy Drones?

Compared to the efficiency of the base game, everything is laggy.

I've had 10,000 actively mining before and still at 60UPS

kosherbacon79

Out of curiosity, what was the inspiration for making this?

I was tired of the setup process of mining drills. So many belts, drills, poles, etc. Especially before construction robots.

This makes it, more expensive an investment, but then its way more convenient to set up.

aqua55

Does concrete floor increase the movement speed?

Yep

obchodlp

Will they have headlights or Santa's hats?

They have headlights... but maybe I can do a Christmas special

Link to mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Mining_Drones

Mining drones

These guys mine for you, based from their mining depot.

You can also mine things like Uranium, by inputting the required fluid into the back of the depot. The mining depot has a small caution floor mat in front of where the drones spawn. If you block it, a warning will show, and drones won't be able to spawn.

The mining area is shown when hovering over a depot, it is a 80x80 area in front of the depot.

The mining drones and mining depot is unlocked from the start of the game (so you can use it instead of mining drills), and they don't require any power.

There are 2 technologies related to the mining drones:

• Mining drone speed: Increases walking speed, mining speed, and carry capacity.

• Mining drone productivity: Gives a chance to produce extra products when mining.

If you change the recipe or mine the depot, all the 'connected' drones will die. Painfully. So lets try to avoid that.

Each depot can hold 100...